Designated *sshole (ft. Hillary Slattery, IAB Tech Lab)

In this episode of AdTech AdTalk, hosts Adam and Gareth are joined by Hillary Slattery, Director of Product Management at IAB Tech Lab and the "designated asshole" charged with shepherding OpenRTB.They dive deep into the granular realities of programmatic advertising, from the importance of OpenRTB's 107-page spec to the contentious debates around video ad placement definitions and the widespread misuse of the buyer UID field. Hillary explains why deal IDs are often a "band-aid" for poor OpenRTB implementation and the challenges of standardizing creative across platforms.The trio also discusses the implications of the Omnicom/IPG merger, the $16 billion Facebook makes from scam ads, and why users actually prefer ad-supported content to paying for it.Chapter Timestamps0:00 Intro & Pontiac DSP Shoutout 01:22 Happy Birthday to Gareth & Marley! 02:03 Meet Hillary Slattery 06:09 What is OpenRTB? 08:55 The Role of Agentic AI in Ad Tech 16:43 Standardizing Creative with Ad-ID 21:52 The "Designated Asshole" of OpenRTB 26:23 The Debate Over "In-Stream" Video 28:02 The Buyer UID Field Controversy 38:28 Agency Holdcos & The "Bonus Malus" Trap 45:22 Why You Should Use Deals in CTV 50:02 Deal IDs vs. OpenRTB Implementation 55:08 Post-Mortem: "No Such Thing as Server-Side Header Bidding" 58:44 Post-Mortem: Facebook's $16 Billion Scam Ad Problem 1:03:01 News: Trade Desk's Bad Creative Preview 1:04:54 News: Meta Wins Antitrust Case & User Ad Tolerance 1:08:56 News: Omnicom/IPG Merger & The End of Scale 1:12:34 Outro